Mac OS X Version

[tlmurray23]

Seems like it's a broad enough request that it could stand a thread of its own.

I think this weekend I *might* break down and put Leopard on my PowerBook, which means no Classic, and I'd have to use Frame for Windows in one of the virtualization products. Uck.

[Paolo T]

There is another thing I fear for us tech writers in the next future. While I see that Adobe is adding FM features to ID, I also know very well that when these products will converge in a single application (namely, ID), we technical writers will be muted by graphic artists, each time we will be discussing a new feature, with the classic formula: "How many people will use this feature? Oh, you are just a small minority, here, aren't you? So, shut up, you dirty technical writer. You are not the core business of ID". Already seen so many times, that I can start betting when this is going to happen!

Paolo

[peter minneapolis]

Paolo Tramannoni wrote:

There is another thing I fear for us tech writers in the next future. While I see that Adobe is adding FM features to ID, I also know very well that when these products will converge in a single application (namely, ID), we technical writers will be muted by graphic artists, each time we will be discussing a new feature, with the classic formula: "How many people will use this feature? Oh, you are just a small minority, here, aren't you? So, shut up, you dirty technical writer. You are not the core business of ID". Already seen so many times, that I can start betting when this is going to happen!

Paolo

Hi, Paolo:

I'll take a pass on commenting on the above.

However, I wanted to mention one additional setting that can affect performance and speed - Object > Display Performance. Setting a lower than maximum screen appearance can improve the speed of screen actions, and a more-powerful video card with lots of video RAM also improve performance. You can't change the video card or video RAM in a MacBook Pro (or most other laptops), so choosing the most powerful hardware when purchasing is important.

HTH

Regards,

Peter
_______________________
Peter Gold
KnowHow ProServices

[tlmurray23]

Paolo Tramannoni wrote:

Fogharty, I planned to remain in FM for how good it is in general; but the several troubles I'm into with working under Windows made me decide to further evaluate switching to OpenOffice in the near future. It is not as reliable as FM used to be, and very involuted (as Word is) in common tasks like cross-references, indexes, external picture linking, books. But I'm balancing between different problems, here, instead of different features, and Windows does indeed look like the worse problem.

Paolo

I'm sure not seeing Windows as the "worse problem". Sure, FM has actually gathered more bugs as it has matured and needed features asked for in version 3 still are not there, but nothing so bad that would warrant a Word lookalike such as OpenOffice. I use FM9 and FM10 in Parallels on a MacBook Pro, and it's pretty stable. I do get more crashes than I used to with earlier versions -- maybe one every four days -- but since I save every couple of minutes, I've never lost any work.

I would, of course, rather use a native Mac app, but until Adobe realizes people are buying Macs and Mac market share is on the rise, Windows will have to do.

[Paolo T]

Hi Tim,

I'm sure not seeing Windows as the "worse problem".

On the contrary, I see it as a major problem. For example, I use several characters that are not on the physical keyboard, and the Special Character palette (is this the right name?), that seems to come out of the DOS age and is not even able to automatically scroll, is a nightmare. The inability of managing CMYK colors correctly (as discussed in another thread) has been another major problem for me. And the need to continuosly go back to the mouse has made my work very unfomfortable.

nothing so bad that would warrant a Word lookalike such as OpenOffice

In the end, I aborted that project, and restarted it with InDesign. OOo has an incredibly high amount of bugs and limitations, that - worse that the issues themselves - the developers do not recognize as problems. The work with InDesign went well, despite some residual hassles.

I use FM9 and FM10 in Parallels on a MacBook Pro, and it's pretty stable

While the operating system itself proved rather stable on my Mac (Windows is running on an ideal environment when running on a virtual machine), FrameMaker 9 crashes very often. The only hint I could get from the forums - do not use the lower-side palettes, or how they are called - was not very practical in my view.

Paolo

[Paolo T]

Well, here is another reason why FrameMaker on Mac is a need, more than a preference.

Today, we could finally compare the old version of a manual created with the Adobe Minion font on a Mac, against the new version, where fonts were replaced with Adobe Minion Pro on Windows XP. The new version looks rougher, grainier, less harmonic. In two words, less professionaly typeset.

I don't know if someone did a similar test, but in my experience, working on the Windows version of FrameMaker will make us look as if we were working with a standard wordprocessor, and knew nothing about typography.

Paolo

[tlmurray23]

Well, that's really a function of the font and you're comparing Type 1 on Mac with OpenType in Windows. Type 1 in Mac and Windows look the same, at least to me. (Although something else could be amiss, since even the T1 and OT really should look very much the same.) Frame is not exactly known for its typographic elegance anyway!

[Paolo T]

Tim, shouldn't OpenType fonts be even more accurate than Type 1? And yes, they are not exactly the same font (Minion agains Minion Pro), but I wonder why the older font looks better than the new one.

[peter minneapolis]

Paolo Tramannoni wrote:

Well, here is another reason why FrameMaker on Mac is a need, more than a preference.

Today, we could finally compare the old version of a manual created with the Adobe Minion font on a Mac, against the new version, where fonts were replaced with Adobe Minion Pro on Windows XP. The new version looks rougher, grainier, less harmonic. In two words, less professionaly typeset.

I don't know if someone did a similar test, but in my experience, working on the Windows version of FrameMaker will make us look as if we were working with a standard wordprocessor, and knew nothing about typography.

Paolo

Examine the maker.ini files of the Windows version (there are two maker.ini files - one is for the current user, one for the FrameMaker application.) Make a safety copy, then open the ini file in a plain text editor and search for "DisplayUsingPrinterMetrics" without quotes. Here's a link to information about settings for this property: http://lists.frameusers.com/pipermail/framers/2006-August/003991.html. Also, search Google for "printermetrics framemaker maker.ini" without quotes, for more links.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

[Paolo T]

Peter, thank you for pointing me toward a possible solution. I'll experiment with it.

[tlmurray23]

Today, we could finally compare the old version of a manual created with the Adobe Minion font on a Mac, against the new version, where fonts were replaced with Adobe Minion Pro on Windows XP. The new version looks rougher, grainier, less harmonic. In two words, less professionaly typeset.

Are you talking paper or screen? Because there are a wealth of settings that affect screen.

[Paolo T]

Tim, the difference is both on screen and paper. I had just hoped the difference was only evident onscreen, but it is not. Even if the difference is more evident onscreen (where even shapes in embedded illustratons are often wrong, but look good on paper).

[tlmurray23]

Paolo Tramannoni wrote:

Tim, the difference is both on screen and paper. I had just hoped the difference was only evident onscreen, but it is not. Even if the difference is more evident onscreen (where even shapes in embedded illustratons are often wrong, but look good on paper).

It's hard to put forth an answer without seeing it live. However, I can sum up a couple of things.

• Peter's suggestion affects the space between characters on the screen, but not on paper. When metrics are enabled, the space between characters opens up a bit. But again, the printout should be the same.
• Characters in graphics have a dependency on the type of graphic, such as native Illustrator, EPS and its preview, TIFF, or what have you, and then of course there is the resolution of the screen itself.
• Insofar as Mac vs. Windows is concerned, at my customer sites, I am the lone Mac user in a sea of Windows.  I work in project situations where we share Frame documents back and forth all day, and I don't recall a time when the platform made any difference in printed output whatsoever. In fact, many of my coworkers can't make PDFs, so I make the PDFs for Windows users at the last steps, and there are never any problems. 

Tim, shouldn't OpenType fonts be even more accurate than Type 1? And yes, they are not exactly the same font (Minion agains Minion Pro), but I wonder why the older font looks better than the new one.

Umm, hard to say what you mean by "accurate". But in any case, both technologies should appear on the printed page so similar that frankly I would have no way of telling them apart, and in fact, if the T1 Minion was converted to OpenType, then the strokes used to create the character shapes would not have changed. A font technology expert might chime in here, but I think that's a true statement.

[tlmurray23]

I have a new MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard. I installed SheepShaver to run FrameMaker, and it works darned well, surprisingly perky.

[Paolo T]

Tim,

I agree the most recent version of SheepShaver runs very well. The only problem is that I have messed-up keyboard layouts (by looking at the Keyboard diagram, it seems that physical keys are remapped to other keys, possibly due to the ANSI and ISO different layouts).

I must report that, recently, I did a middle-sized project with InDesign CS5. Despite some oddities (for example, continuing to warn about broken cross-references, when they are perfectly fine; or not allowing for direct composition of pictures plus captions and connecting lines in a frame) it adds most of the things we have always asked for in FrameMaker. Object styles, faithful preview, print styles, a smart way of managing conditions, cross-references and variables, multimedia integration, smart export to Html or the new e-book formats - just to name a few. And, it works like a charm on the Mac (with perfect integration with the other apps of the suite).

Conversion of files via the RTF format is possible, despite having to reconnect all linked pictures. I don't know if ID can already suit all projects, but for sure it does with mines. CS5 is good enough for technical manuals. So much, that returning to the PC side for using FrameMaker looks like a travel in the past. Really a shame: just look at the different sizes of files (ID generates huge files), and you understand how good FM could have been, if not abandoned.

Paolo

[peter minneapolis]

Paolo Tramannoni wrote:

Tim,

I agree the most recent version of SheepShaver runs very well. The only problem is that I have messed-up keyboard layouts (by looking at the Keyboard diagram, it seems that physical keys are remapped to other keys, possibly due to the ANSI and ISO different layouts).

I must report that, recently, I did a middle-sized project with InDesign CS5. Despite some oddities (for example, continuing to warn about broken cross-references, when they are perfectly fine; or not allowing for direct composition of pictures plus captions and connecting lines in a frame) it adds most of the things we have always asked for in FrameMaker. Object styles, faithful preview, print styles, a smart way of managing conditions, cross-references and variables, multimedia integration, smart export to Html or the new e-book formats - just to name a few. And, it works like a charm on the Mac (with perfect integration with the other apps of the suite).

Conversion of files via the RTF format is possible, despite having to reconnect all linked pictures. I don't know if ID can already suit all projects, but for sure it does with mines. CS5 is good enough for technical manuals. So much, that returning to the PC side for using FrameMaker looks like a travel in the past. Really a shame: just look at the different sizes of files (ID generates huge files), and you understand how good FM could have been, if not abandoned.

Paolo

In addition to the RTF methods already mentioned, here's a little more info:

* You can copy from InDesign and paste into FrameMaker. This seems to be an RTF via clipboard operation, although my default clipboard format preference is: ClipboardFormatsPriorities=FILE, EMF, DIB, BMP, MIFW, MIF, RTF, OLE 2, META, UNICODE TEXT, TEXT

* FrameMaker's RTF import offers two options - MS RTF, and Japanese RTF.

The examples below show the differences:

InDesign original:

FrameMaker results of copy/paste, MS Word RTF import, Japanese RTF import:

It's interesting to see that InDesign drop caps are automatically converted to anchored frames by FrameMaker, and how different the Japanese conversion is. For both the MS Word import and the Japanese RTF import, Retain Original Formatting and Using Current Document's Catalog produce the same import results.

Regarding the appropriateness of InDesign and FrameMaker for tech publishing (or anything else):

* While FrameMaker's typographic abilities are less profound than InDesign's, at this time, and FrameMaker's layout abilities are weaker than InDesign's, and FrameMaker layouts also require more manual effort than InDesign to accomplish the same fancy stuff, one basic question is "How much does the the presence of creative visual increase the value or delivery of the technical information to its intended audience?

* While InDesign's layout and design features trump FrameMaker's, InDesign's currently quite weak in creating help systems, especially context-sensitive help that links to user interface objects in applications. Currently, InDesign is also weak in content reuse via content-management systems.

* InDesign can do XML-based database publishing pretty well without third-party tools, and without too much setup effort. FrameMaker's built-in database publishing ability requires lots of setup with variables and significant preparation of the source data.

* Both applications can incorporate multi-media content, and their development in this area is ongoing.

Many of us would love to have FrameMaker on Mac (my examples above are created under Windows XP SP3 running on Parallels Desktop 5, on a MBPro 6MB RAM, running Snow Leopard. It takes a while to get used to the virtual machine application (I previously had used VMware Fusion2.) There are times when the internal memory shuffling and checkpoint-snapshots stalls the action, but, hey, there's always a new release of virtualizers to improve on that<G>.

HTH

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

[Paolo T]

Hi Peter,

In addition to the RTF methods already mentioned

Unfortunately, going the other way round (from FM to ID) copy & paste does not seem to work so well. Paragraph styles or any other kind of formatting are flattened out. This, at least, going from Windows XP to the Mac.

one basic question is "How much does the the presence of creative visual increase the value or delivery of the technical information to its intended audience?

Just speaking for myself: all the typography in FM is enough for the kind of works I do. However, what I like in ID is how easy (so, how quicker and effortless) it is dealing with the layout. Sometimes, the better layout abilities of ID make the job extremely easier: for example, when you have to deal with linked EPS files, whose preview may be very clear in ID, unreadable in FM. For the work I'm currently doing, I have to keep the EPS files open on a separate program, since the preview in FM is totaly useless. In ID, I could simply turn on the high quality preview for the single picture, or for a whole chapter. No need to jump from an app to another while writing.

Another example is when you must insert a large picture across a spread. I've never found a way to do this effortlessly in FM (I either break the picture in two different frames in the facing pages, or, if I can, I create a new document whose page size is double the basic layout). ID is based on spreads, so no problem there.

In other words: I'm perfectly happy with the layout finesse, and the print quality of the Mac version of FM, but not of the way the page layout can be edited.

InDesign's currently quite weak in creating help systems, especially context-sensitive help that links to user interface objects in applications

For the way I deal with help systems, ID is quite good. Both for PC help systems, and for embedded-systems help, I export Html files from single sections. ID CS5 generates some very clean code - something that, unfortunately, is not yet true with FM9 (can you easily read the flat, no-indentation text file it generates?)

FM9 has the advantage of automatically breaking a whole document into sections, based on paragraph styles. I've not used this feature long enough to give my opinion on it, but it seems to work very well. In the meantime, for shorter works, I like how exporting the selected passage as a Html file in ID allows for fine control on what you export.

I'm slowly moving toward PDF help systems in PC applications - something giving solution to the problem of cross-platform compatibility. The PDF generated by ID is much better than the one generated by FM, for quality and lack of problems with colors and lines. ID is also ready for EPUB and Flash export, a world I'm carefully exploring (but the systems I deal with are not yet ready to use).

Currently, InDesign is also weak in content reuse via content-management systems.

Can you elaborate on that? I would like to see what other problem I'm going to face.

Many of us would love to have FrameMaker on Mac ... but, hey, there's always a new release of virtualizers to improve on that<G>.

Nowadays virtualizers are not bad, indeed. The standard interface of Adobe apps also makes the different interface nearly transparent (I have FrameMaker at full screen in Windows, and Illustrator on the background on the Mac side: they could be running in the same environment). I also use a couple helper apps (KeyRemap4MaBook on the Mac, maConfort on the PC) to make keyboard shortuctus a lot easier, and a different skin in Windows.

The problem is how mad it is typing some commonly used characters in FM Win: something like the elypsis, the N- and M-dashes, the list's dot; even square brackets are moved to other places. And the Unicode chooser, is it a way to make you feel a bit less guilty of working on a warm office instead that in a cold mine? I usully type these character in the Mac side, then paste it in the PC side. Much easier.

Paolo

[peter minneapolis]

Hi, Paolo:

Thanks for the reply. My interline comments are marked with PG>

Paolo Tramannoni wrote:

Hi Peter,

In addition to the RTF methods already mentioned

Unfortunately, going the other way round (from FM to ID) copy & paste does not seem to work so well. Paragraph styles or any other kind of formatting are flattened out. This, at least, going from Windows XP to the Mac.

PG> Yes, I found some differences between copy from FrameMaker and paste to InDesign, vs import FrameMaker RTF. Anchored frames are lost.

one basic question is "How much does the the presence of creative visual increase the value or delivery of the technical information to its intended audience?

Just speaking for myself: all the typography in FM is enough for the kind of works I do. However, what I like in ID is how easy (so, how quicker and effortless) it is dealing with the layout. Sometimes, the better layout abilities of ID make the job extremely easier: for example, when you have to deal with linked EPS files, whose preview may be very clear in ID, unreadable in FM.

PG> This affects your work with layout, but isn't quite a layout issue. I'm not sure if saving the EPS files with a different preview type would display better in FrameMaker; some folks on the InDesign forum suggest dropping EPS for several reasons. I'm not sure if Adobe Bridge comes with the Technical Communications Suite 2; if it does, or if you have it from a Creative Suite, it may help your FrameMaker graphics management.

For the work I'm currently doing, I have to keep the EPS files open on a separate program, since the preview in FM is totaly useless. In ID, I could simply turn on the high quality preview for the single picture, or for a whole chapter. No need to jump from an app to another while writing.

Another example is when you must insert a large picture across a spread. I've never found a way to do this effortlessly in FM (I either break the picture in two different frames in the facing pages, or, if I can, I create a new document whose page size is double the basic layout). ID is based on spreads, so no problem there.

PG> Yes, a FrameMaker limitation.

In other words: I'm perfectly happy with the layout finesse, and the print quality of the Mac version of FM, but not of the way the page layout can be edited.

InDesign's currently quite weak in creating help systems, especially context-sensitive help that links to user interface objects in applications

For the way I deal with help systems, ID is quite good. Both for PC help systems, and for embedded-systems help, I export Html files from single sections. ID CS5 generates some very clean code - something that, unfortunately, is not yet true with FM9 (can you easily read the flat, no-indentation text file it generates?)

PG> I'm not sure what you're referring to. You can map FrameMaker paragraph formats to HTML styles in File > Utilities > HTML Setup, or by using the HTML Mapping Tables in Reference Pages. You can also customize the CSS. I haven't looked at InDesign's Export for Dreamweaver much. 

FM9 has the advantage of automatically breaking a whole document into sections, based on paragraph styles. I've not used this feature long enough to give my opinion on it, but it seems to work very well. In the meantime, for shorter works, I like how exporting the selected passage as a Html file in ID allows for fine control on what you export.

PG> Are you exporting HTML with the Dreamweaver export, or did I miss it?

I'm slowly moving toward PDF help systems in PC applications - something giving solution to the problem of cross-platform compatibility. The PDF generated by ID is much better than the one generated by FM, for quality and lack of problems with colors and lines. ID is also ready for EPUB and Flash export, a world I'm carefully exploring (but the systems I deal with are not yet ready to use).

Currently, InDesign is also weak in content reuse via content-management systems.

Can you elaborate on that? I would like to see what other problem I'm going to face.

PG> Search Google for "FrameMaker content management," "FrameMaker content reuse," "FrameMaker CMS," and similar terms without quotes to see lots of discussions. Basically these control which user can check out a chunk of content and change it, while blocking others from using it until it's checked back into the system. Some of these tools also search through document repositories for similar chunks and report that, so you can decide if one chunk can be used in more than one place; IOW, avoid duplication and near duplication for uniformity as well as less-costly translation.

Many of us would love to have FrameMaker on Mac ... but, hey, there's always a new release of virtualizers to improve on that<G>.

Nowadays virtualizers are not bad, indeed. The standard interface of Adobe apps also makes the different interface nearly transparent (I have FrameMaker at full screen in Windows, and Illustrator on the background on the Mac side: they could be running in the same environment). I also use a couple helper apps (KeyRemap4MaBook on the Mac, maConfort on the PC) to make keyboard shortuctus a lot easier, and a different skin in Windows.

The problem is how mad it is typing some commonly used characters in FM Win: something like the elypsis, the N- and M-dashes, the list's dot; even square brackets are moved to other places. And the Unicode chooser, is it a way to make you feel a bit less guilty of working on a warm office instead that in a cold mine? I usully type these character in the Mac side, then paste it in the PC side. Much easier.

PG> I don't use these much. Consider a "companion file" to keep open in your workspace, and copy/paste from it all in PC. Also, look up the keystrokes here: http://help.adobe.com/en_US/FrameMaker/9.0/CharacterSets/character_sets.pdf, if you haven't already. Granted, they are awkward until you get used to them.

Paolo

Regards,

Peter

_______________________

Peter Gold

KnowHow ProServices

[tlmurray23]

Just noticed there are over 8700 views of this thread. Hmm, could there be interest in Frame for Mac?

[Paolo T]

I'm in the middle of a switch to InDesign CS5 Mac from FrameMaker 9.0 PC. Leaving this latter will be a bless, since it has very little to do with the speed and comfort of FrameMaker 6.0 Mac. Just to name a few major limitations, I would cite the lack of most shortcuts, the atrocious character palette, the continual crashing (for which a few forum member suggested me to just avoid using some features...).

If FrameMaker has to be ported to the Mac, I would hope it will not be a porting from FrameMaker PC. At the same time, due to the huge improvements in the long-document management of InDesign, I would be as happy to see this latter grow in a direction that us, old FrameMaker users, can fully appreciate. InDesign CS5 Mac has some major bugs, like crashing when copying text including cross references, slowing down for no apparent reasons, or reporting not-updated cross-references when they are all fine. And it has some major limitations, like forcing one to create grouped illustrations and captions on the pasteboard, and only after that allow for cutting and pasting into the document.

At the same time, InDesign is a modern Mac program, with all the expected comfort and a good deal of modern features (like multimedia and eBook support). With improvements (mostly in the field of reliability) it can become a viable FrameMaker replacement. Developers have just to understand that not all publishing is mostly made of illustrations and a few added text; some of it is made of text and illustrations.

Paolo

[tlmurray23]

Leaving this latter will be a bless, since it has very little to do with the speed and comfort of FrameMaker 6.0 Mac.

You could probably find an FM7 on eBay, or elsewhere. The only reason I stopped using FM7 a few months ago was because my latest customers are on 9 or 10, and the constant back-and-forth MIF was a pain.

If FrameMaker has to be ported to the Mac, I would hope it will not be a porting from FrameMaker PC. At the same time, due to the huge improvements in the long-document management of InDesign, I would be as happy to see this latter grow in a direction that us, old FrameMaker users, can fully appreciate.

I'm not so sure InDesign can pull it off -- be made into a long document publisher with the features of Frame, that is.

With improvements (mostly in the field of reliability) it can become a viable FrameMaker replacement. Developers have just to understand that not all publishing is mostly made of illustrations and a few added text; some of it is made of text and illustrations.

I have found InDesign to be very stable. So for me, it's a matter of not handling text and graphics in the way that Frame can.

[Paolo T]

Hi Tim,

You could probably find an FM7 on eBay, or elsewhere

FM7 is not less tied to an obsolete operating system than version 6, so I guess it would not be a very useful upgrade. And, as you say, the file format is no longer easy to exchange.

I'm not so sure InDesign can pull it off -- be made into a long document publisher with the features of Frame, that is.

For sure, it has greatly improved with version CS5. I could create a 250-page document with it, and it worked fine. I'm now on a much longer project, and I will be able to report my experience in a few months. I don't think it will become a FrameMaker equivalent, but it is probably next to being usable for similar tasks.

I have found InDesign to be very stable

On my machine, it crashes each time I copy some text containing cross-references, and in a few other cases. Reported bugs were never fixed.

Paolo

[jmedef]

Well -

Just noticed FM 10 has been available... was hoping Adobe finally woke up from their clue-coma  and come out with a Mac version, cuz I hauled my last PC out of the house last month.  I write a lot of tech manuals and I have to say, after 15 years on Solaris, I'm HATING MS Word: I doesn't scale at all and it crashed on me today - 4 times.

I want Framemaker and I don't want to have to use a P.O.S. operating system to get my work done.

WTF is wrong with Adobe? Why don't they just turn the Solaris src over to the creative commons and let one of us desperate hackers beat that product back into submission?  Criminy, I'll even take version 7, just get me off Word =[

[tlmurray23]

If Adobe had a heart they would release the Mac and Linux versions to the Commons. Back in the day, I heard many a developer claim it wouldn't take but a few months to come up with a Mac and (modern) Linux version. Another fellow had contacted me for my thoughts on whether he should get funding to make a pass at buying it.

[Mike Wickham]

If Adobe had a heart they would release the Mac and Linux versions to

the Commons.

If you ask me, that's a ridiculous request. Free versions of FrameMaker

could potentially steal sales from the for-sale version. It's akin to

asking Apple to give away PC and Linux versions of Aperture.